This afternoon, China’s top climate diplomat, Xie Zhenhua, asked the US to commit to cutting at least 40% of its carbon output by 2020. The tough talk came in an interview with Zhenhua at Copenhagen. So far, much of the focus in Copenhagen has been on China and the United States, the two key players in the negotiations. Many speculate that if the two powers cannot come to an agreement, the Copenhagen Conference will fail to produce any substantive accord.

There is also disagreement between the two on how much money should be given to developing nations. China believes that developed nations should give upwards of 1.5% of their GDP to developing nations to help close the economic gap, a number much higher than the $10 billion per year pledged by first world nations.

Time will tell whether or not China and the US can come to an agreement, there are still nine days left in Copenhagen including a much anticipated visit by President Barack Obama.

Copenhagen Day One - COP 15 President Connie Hedegaard opened up the Copenhagen conference today urging what has emerged as the common theme among the media and heads of state attending; action must happen now.

The sentiment was echoed by the worlds media; according to the BBC an incredible 56 newspapers in 45 countries carried editorials “urging politicians to forget their differences and work together to forge an agreement.” The, “point of no return” theme permeates the conference. The sense of urgency combined with the unprecedented public attention creates a perfect storm of action; just what the organizers hoped.

We’ll be covering the event throughout the day, in the meantime you can watch it live here or below if your browser supports iframes.

State officials have revised the estimated cost of the Northern Lights Express to $990 million. The number could become reality if the Northern Lights Express is built using the “worst case scenario.” Federal money could pay up to 80% of the project, but supporters and the state need to find common ground on what the estimated cost is to submit an application for federal funding.

8th district Congressman Jim Oberstar, chair of the U.S. House Transportation Committee disagrees. In an interview with Minnesota Public Radio, Oberstar said “Those are factors yet to be determined…Resolution of those open-end issues will determine its overall cost. I don’t see the need for a billion-dollar investment.”

The line would spur an estimated $2 billion in investment, according to the Northern Lights Express Passenger Rail Project (NLX). However, headaches started when the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MNDOT) and NLX found major discrepancies in their visions of the line. Some of the key sticking points are:

• The number of trains - MNDOT wants up to eight trains costing and extra $140 million, NLX suggests only three or four are needed to run the proposed eight daily trips.
• The track - MNDOT wants two sets of track running the full length of the corridor from the Cities to Duluth, NLX says only 100 miles of the route needs to be double tracked.
• Bridges - MNDOT wants to replace every bridge along the corridor, NLX disagrees saying if the route was only single track between Sandstone and Superior, it would eliminate the need to replace as many as four bridges, significantly reducing the cost.

MNDOT and NLX have the next several weeks to hammer out the details before the application must be sent. In the meantime, NLX is sponsoring an informational meeting on Thursday, December 3rd in Cambridge, Minnesota. The open house runs from 4:30 to 6:00pm at the Armed Forces Reserve Community Center – Assembly Hall in Cambridge.

Last fall, 102 megabytes of private emails, documents and other files were downloaded from servers at the Climate Research Unit at the UK’s East Anglia University. Included in the files are over a thousand emails between climate scientists, interactions seldom seen by the general public. Since the leak, climate skeptics have been in an uproar over the files, publishing innumerable posts parsing through the emails and exposing some of the more insidious elements within the files.

I read through them myself and a few things stood out.

First, the concentration on public relations in their work. In this email, not only do the scientists openly discuss how disappointing the BBC’s “What Happened to Global Warming” is, but one scientist even goes to far to say that “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.” Another suggests “we may do something about this on RealClimate, but meanwhile it might be appropriate for the Met Office to have a say about this, I might ask Richard Black what’s up here?”

Influencing public perception of a scientific theory seems to be, at least to this author, beyond the purview of scientists’ work. So, for a baseline of what was acceptable behavior for a scientist, I searched for a scientist code of ethics and eventually found one at the Royal Society of New Zealand (find it here). Several of the ethics standards address the influence of public opinion, particularly the fifth tenet of the code, responsibility to community, specifically sub-tenets “f” and “g”:

f. avoid attempting to influence public policy in situations where the available scientific evidence is contradictory or inconclusive without making the state of that evidence clear;

g. support the publication and dissemination of all competent research even when the conclusions drawn by the authors are contrary to a member’s own opinions or to the currently accepted consensus.

The inconvenient fact is that there is contradictory evidence out there. They address in their own emails that their models do not account for the last 11 years of cooling; that fact contradicts their conclusions. Second, it is clear that they strive to suppress other critical opinions, a clear violation of tenet “g.” In this email its clear the author, Professor Phil Jones, seeks to suppress the work of well known climate change skeptic, Prof. Lindzen of MIT, saying “I wasn’t able to stop some comments being put in by Lindzen, but Tom has a paper as does Myles which are enough to ignore his and the Douglass papers. Cheers Phil.”

The attempted suppression of another scientist’s work is reprehensible and well outside the boundries of what is accepted ethical behavior for a scientist. Suppressing contradictory conclusions is antithetic to the goals of science. Beliefs should be challenged, pre-conceived notions should be questioned, it’s how we advance as a society.

The other thing that struck me was the lengths of which the scientists would go to attack the credibility of their critics. In one email, Tom Wigley openly writes that “Perhaps the University of Wisconsin ought to open up a public comment period to decide whether Pat Michaels [sic], PhD needs re-assessing?”

Again, consulting the code of ethics from Royal Society of New Zealand, one finds a section on the treatment of collegues.

4. To care for collegues

Members must support ethical behaviour and high professional standards in their colleagues and must treat such colleagues with integrity and honesty.

These requirements mean, for example, that members must:

a. review the work of colleagues without bias and treat all information gained in such activity as privileged and confidential;

b. appropriately acknowledge the work and contributions of colleagues;

c. avoid falsely, vexaciously or maliciously attempting to impugn the reputations of colleagues or otherwise compromising or denigrating them in order to achieve commercial, professional or personal advantages;

d. support the career development of colleagues by providing honest, unbiased comment on their career prospects, on the conduct of their work or on their proposals, manuscripts and papers;

e. encourage and support the development of junior colleagues;

f. be aware that in the event of a challenge to a member over his or her past ethical conduct the retention of and ability to produce all the appropriate records may prove to be crucial.

Are climate scientists so entrenched in their groupthink as to insult or impugn anyone with differing opinion? I understand that the correspondance brought to light was never meant to be read by the public, but we as a public should at the very minimum demand that these scientists, many of whom are paid with taxpayer money, conduct themselves in a professionally honest and ethical manner. Lets hope that the publication of these emails forces introspection of those who participated in this correspondence and they begin to elevate the standards to which they hold themselves, both personally and professionally.

A searchable index of the files can be found here.

A copy of the Royal Society Code of Ethics can be found here.

Many of the scientists participating in the email exchanges contribute to the RealClimate blog found here.

The hacked database in its entirety can be found here.

According to Democratic sources, the Congressional Budget Office estimates the Senate version of health care reform will cost $849 billion over the next ten years. The CBO also predicts the legislation would reduce the deficit by $127 billion over the first ten years. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid hopes to hold debate on the bill as early as Saturday. Some of the reforms in the bill include:

• Requiring most Americans to carry health insurance
• Mandating that large companies provide coverage to their workers
• Banning certain insurance company practices such as denying coverage on the basis of pre-existing medical conditions
• Setting up new insurance marketplaces — called exchanges — primarily for those who now have a hard time getting or keeping coverage

The test will now be whether or not Reid can get the 60 votes needed to pass the bill. The first procedural vote on the bill should take place by the end of the week.

Reuters reported yesterday that many world leaders are now supporting a delay in creating a legally binding pact to tackle climate change. The change is a dramatic about-face from a few weeks ago when a Copenhagen pact seemed eminent. From Reuters;

“There was an assessment by the leaders that it was unrealistic to expect a full, internationally legally binding agreement to be negotiated between now and when Copenhagen starts in 22 days,” said U.S. negotiator Michael Froman.

“We believe it is better to have something good than to have nothing at all,” said Chilean Foreign Minister Mariano Fernandez. The next major U.N. climate meeting is in Bonn in mid-2010.

“Copenhagen can and must deliver clarity on emission reductions and the finance to kickstart action. I have seen nothing to change my view on that,” said Yvo de Boer, the U.N.’s top climate change official. Ministers from 40 nations will meet in Copenhagen on Monday and Tuesday for preparatory talks. (Reuters, “World leaders back delay to final climate deal,” November 15, 2009)

But the agreement to delay is a definite setback in the eyes of environmental groups like Greenpeace;

“Climate change impacts are already affecting millions across the developing world and they need action now. This is not about time but rather the absence of political will from industrialised countries, which are refusing to take their fair share of the global efforts, and instead continue to postpone important decisions into eternity.” - Greenpeace International Climate Change Policy Advisor Kaisa Kosonen (The Ecologist, “EU must ’step-in’ to save Copenhagen from disaster,” November 16, 2009)

The focus in Copenhagen will now be the mandating of continued talks and the setting of a deadline to pass legally binding emissions agreements. The negotiations could resume as early as next summer at the next UN Climate Change Conference in Bonn.

On October 14^th, the Minnesota Free Market Institute hosted world renowned climate skeptic, Lord Christopher Monckton, before a cheering crowd of over 700 at Bethel University in St. Paul. In his 95-minute speech, Lord Monckton, who served as policy adviser to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, utterly destroyed the so-called ‘science’ behind global warming (the entire presentation is available on DVD).

But it is the last 4 ½ minutes of his speech that have been echoing worldwide ever since and have been seen by over 2,000,000 people. In that four minutes, Lord Monckton drew attention to the alarming Copenhagen Treaty discussions scheduled for Dec. 6-10 which have the potential to authorize a world governmental body (requiring Senate ratification) to regulate climate and to require that industrial nations pay a substantial “climate debt” to developing countries. With headlines such as “Is Obama Poised to Cede U.S. Sovereignty?”, the video clip began circulating on YouTube the day following the speech and since then, well over 2,000,000 people have viewed it. In addition, nearly 100 exact copies of the video have been downloaded and are circulating on the web. The clip was replayed on Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Laura Ingraham and Lou Dobbs as well as local TV stations – and Monckton himself did live interviews with Neil Cavuto and Glenn Beck. An op-ed thanking Lord Monckton for raising his concerns about the Copenhagen Treaty appeared in the WSJ (Asia edition) on October 28th.

The Minnesota Free Market Institute was delighted to play such a significant role in blowing wide open the national debate on climate “realism” vs. “alarmism” and on emissions regulation schemes such as cap-and-trade and the Copenhagen Treaty.

Last night, WCCO featured the Minnesota Free Market Institute and Lord Christopher Monckton’s presentation in their story on the rise of climate skepticism among Americans. The polls at the beginning of the story show a clear shift in attitudes in America, only 57% now believe there is direct evidence for global warming, down from over 70% in April of last year and only 35% believe global warming is a serious threat, as opposed to 44% in 2008.

The story also included the viral success of Lord Christopher Monckton’s presentation, which has amassed over a million and a half views in two weeks. Monckton has been a guest on numerous TV and radio shows along with speaking engagements at tea parties and other events across the US.

The numbers come at a critical time for global warming activists as the Senate looks to take up cap and trade and White House liaisons ready for a trip to Copenhagen to attend the UN’s climate change summit.

See the proposed cap and trade bill here.

See the proposed Copenhagen treaty here.

View the WCCO story here.